Well, we've all got the playoff in our heads, it's normally too early to start with this stuff, but...

I'm here in Frankfurt, local club is Eintracht Frankfurt, big club, went down last year, just gone up. finished second.

Young lad, Sebastian Rode, 21, established himself as a regular this year. Fantastic talent, played mostly defensive midfield, can play either wing, also helped out at right back. Half the Bundesliga are after him.

He's been spotted by the Spuds.

Please don't let him go to them. This is Marko Marin all over again (Frankfurt lad who, via Gladbach and Bremen, became an international and has just signed for Chelsea.)

And while you're at it, check out Sonny Kittel, 19, just breaking into the team, a lot further than our Ravel and without the problems. Plays anywhere up front, a bit like Lansbury, just better. Played 11 league games, scored 3 goals, rave reviews.

Trouble with us is we don't seem to want to pay too much money for our players nowadays .I was shocked when we signed Nolan to be honest , but if the plan is to stay in the Prem , then we'd better start looking for some talent from abroad who won't cost a pretty penny .Wigan seem to have the hang of it .

I remember when we used to have a paid scout in Norway and Sweden and I think the geezer held this post for around 10 years and so far as I am able to recall, during all that time, I don't think he so much as recomended one single, solitary player to us, yet throughout this period, countless Scandianavian players, including many who went on to grace the Premiership, slipped through his network to go to other clubs. This, therefore, begs the question, just what the hell did he do with his time ? Small wonder, we finally realised this guy was doing the sum of nothing and sent him packing

Seen a few threads popping up about players who are out of contract with their current clubs, and we have quite a few coming to the end of contract, so thought I would start this.

I know we have the small matter of a play-off final to deal with, but for most clubs and and down the country, the season is over, and the rumour mill is starting to turn, and speculation will be coming through from now on.

So what do you reckon? Van Persie to leave Arsenal? Fat Frank or Rio to return for a final bow? It's going to be an interesting summer, and I can't wait to see what clubs make big money signings based on the Gary Breen principle ofter the Euro's. (OK, Breen was free, but you know what I mean).

vapourtrail wrote:Rode is a very fine player, but wouldn't choose West Ham as his next career step.

Don't think we've got an international scout at the club, who's traveling across europe to find young players. It's a shame!

I am going to be well annoyed if he goes to Spuds though!

As for scouting in Germany, it wouldn't take much for somebody at the club to scan the stats at kicker.de and find a few possibles that might be worth a closer look.

And mark my words, Sonny Kittel is going to make it bigtime. Buy and loanback and give Frankfurt a percentage of sell on (it won't work otherwise, Eintracht know exactly that they've got a little diamond they've got there, but they are strapped for cash and need to strengthen the squad).

Spuds and l'Arse seem to do this stuff a lot, we seem to be too focused on the present.

James P wrote:Was this in the Redknapp era Puff? Probably kept finding talented players with the wrong agent like Tihinen. No use to us unfortunately.

Yeah. The Redknapp and the Roeder years. There used to be a 'Kumb' subsciber called Morten, who used to post about a number of Scandinavian players and he used to get really frustrated about this. So much so, that he even offered his services to the club to become our Scandicnavian scout and do this free of charge !!